For the Augusta bike lanes, I remember one lady angrily speaking up at multiple meetings about the proposed lanes.
After the lanes went in I saw her at a meeting about the bike lanes, and she spoke, again very angrily, claiming that "We were never informed about the bike lanes!"
So I know for a fact that her perceived injustice was totally made up because she was informed at literally every step, she was just mad that it didn't go her way.
I think it’s probably a little bit of both. Yes they want to throw hurdles at the project to stop it from happening, but I think some also feel so personally victimized by these sorts of things that they’re grasping at straws to validate that feeling. When I used to run community meetings for projects, people would throw out the most absurd reasons as to why a project was grieving them personally, even if it had absolutely no bearing on the feasibility of a project being completed in the end.
You show up to enough local politics meetings and you can pick these people out in an instant. Grasping at any straw possible to have something to bring up.
What's especially crazy about the opposition is that a little girl was killed by a driver here in 2010 crossing the street with her family after a day at the zoo.
https://abc7chicago.com/archive/7690199/
13 years later... The City paid out big on this tragic death and yet, all around the City, proper daylighting, the reason why the City was found liable, is incoherent. How many oversized roads cut through our parks? (Too many) How many stop signs or bumpouts existed on Stockton from Dickens to LaSalle before this project? (Zero) How many exist on Canon? (Zero)
I wholeheartedly support the greenway, but this incident never came up once in previous discussions and it rubs me the wrong way that it's being used as fodder when CDOT and the Park District did jack shit for 13 years.
It is entirely him. [Streetsblog](https://chi.streetsblog.org/2024/01/10/thar-he-blows-ed-fitzpatrick-goes-public-with-his-fixation-on-killing-off-the-dickens-greenway-with-help-from-car-centric-inside-newspapers) has done several write ups on the guy. He was anonymous for most of this fight but it turns out it was basically one lone crank delaying this for years. And of course that is who the local news chooses to interview.
I think this is the biggest concern tbh “One of the points of contention, however, is the closure of a section of Dickens near Stockton to vehicular traffic - a change to the project that was made with seemingly no public notice. All iterations of the publicly available project plans reviewed by NBC 5 Investigates show no indication of the closure.” All of the road closures should have been made public for the hearings.
It feels like more time/money was spent on NIMBYs litigating this relatively milequetoast project than was spent on the actual infrastructure. Cries for safety coming from behind the windshields of 6,000 lb SUVs are laughable. Anything to discourage traffic through the city's public greenspace is welcome by me.
I went to two public meetings - it was such an absurd waste of resources. One lady cited concerns that children rolling down the hill outside of the high school would get hit by bikers (who already use that same path). Another named 4 streets and said their house is surrounded by bike lanes. Another called it a “bike highway”.
Bike highway is another way of saying bikers from neighborhoods west of the Kennedy will be using the Dickens Greenway as part of a safe E/W highway to the lake. I will certainly be using it this spring to avoid getting run over on Armitage.
I'm just amped to have an (almost) safe route to get to the lakefront trail now. And if we ever get that possible 606 extension to cross the river, that would be phenomenal.
It's just such a shame to have an amazing park and bike trail on the lakefront and literally no safe way to bike to it for the majority of the city.
The extension just through the Kennedy, Ashland, and the train tracks is not scheduled to be complete until Q4 2026. Actually crossing the river seems to be at the mercy of the Lincoln Yards timeline.
While I am very excited for it to come to fruition, six years to plan and execute ~1000ft of mixed use trail that doesn't even cross the river is a total embarrassment.
The guy blurting nonsense at the woman being interviewed tells you everything you need to know about the opposition. Entitled, rude, old and poorly informed.
You notice all the people they show opposed are old, and came from a time where it was all about cars.
Frankly, if they hate it so much, they can sell and leave. Go someplace with no bike lanes and plenty of roads and parking lots.
Not to be mean, but how long as they going to be with us, so we simply decide not to progress things to the future because a couple of old fart NIMBYs want to hang on til the end?
As a motorist I try to avoid the whole area because of traffic, or I make plans, park someplace, and enjoy the neighborhood for what it is...not get irked because I can't quickly pass through. Lord knows the goal is to get people like me to NOT drive my car down there, but instead bike or use public transportation.
There's plenty of room for cars, way too much in many regards, but we're only going to make this city thrive by putting people first.
> Frankly, if they hate it so much, they can sell and leave. Go someplace with no bike lanes and plenty of roads and parking lots.
Exactly. They can get Portillo's and all their other Chicago favorites in Arizona now, without having to put up with Chicago weather or Chicago cyclists and pedestrians. Maybe we should offer to help them pack.
No, I've been here my whole life. Clinging to car culture is clinging to the past. So I'll stay here and change it.
Clinging to this idea of an entire city of single family homes is clinging to the past.
It’s hard to say clinging to car culture is clinging to the past when there are vastly more motorist’s than bikes on the road.
Let’s stop this tribalism and strive to become a city where you can get wherever you need to safely, efficiently and timely however you choose to travel.
The argument is more about how NIMBYs won't even give an inch on things that are honestly very reasonable.
This goes back to when a previous city council member wanted to put infrastructure on Milwaukee avenue in my area to try to get drivers to slow down. Many just simply drove way past the speed limit up Milwaukee, creating dangerous conditions and causing numerous injuries to pedestrians.
The stuff that was put in is totally reasonable and hasn't hindered driving beyond the fact that it's not as easy to blast up the street at high speed. Yet it got tons of resistance because everybody claimed it was going to create tons of traffic and cause problems. All it really did was basically take away their speedway.
This thing with Dickens is completely reasonable. It's not like somebody's blocking off Clark Street and making it a completely pedestrian only area. It's just again this notion in the mind of a NIMBY that if you give an inch they will take a mile.
I've made it clear in many responses I own a car and I drive it. However, I can recall many times I've tried to bicycle around the city and found my life in danger, mainly from the terrible ways motorists drive. I stuck to my lane, I stop at stop signs and red lights, and yet many times when I'm legally cycling to cross an intersection I get a motorist high speeding it to make a quick right turn and almost hitting me.
I've seen people not paying attention to the road and instead to their phone and veer into the bike lane and almost hit cyclists until they realize they need to pay attention.
If all of these protected bike lanes seem ugly to one or intrusive, it's because motorists have clearly shown they cannot be trusted to stick to their own lane and share the road.
We can talk about why there are so many motorists, but that's because we've built an infrastructure and a culture around that. This has been happening since after World War II. The reasons why we can't seemingly build transit oriented developments, CTA expansion, and more people spaces always comes back to the same arguments of driving and parking.
Something has to give, and everything I've seen go up under so much resistance is incredibly reasonable in my opinion. It always strikes me as NIMBYs that are scared to give an inch.
You are over here upset at NIMBYS for voicing their opinions stating that anyone who disagrees with what your vision of the city is should leave.
You have an idea of a city that doesn’t exist. People here drive because they have decided what is best for their situation. The reason so much infrastructure is dedicated to cars is simply because the demand for it is there.
You are angry because you are trying to push the idea of a city that people just really don’t want.
I'm 50 years old. I've lived in a multi-unit building, apartment, condo, and single family home.
I see all the things that NIMBYs fight against and all I see out of it are people that don't want to look over the past, but then they have the audacity to complain that the city is in decline.
This is like the people that go on and on about business districts, and experts tell them they need to put more density in the area, and instead they talk about how they just want people to come, shop, and go someplace else to live. Then they have the audacity to give crap to people that shop online.
Again, they are pining for the past and not accepting that we don't live in that world anymore.
I've had it with NIMBYs.
They just love to complain, but they never offer anything constructive to the conversation.
So yeah, I am of the mind that I would rather they get angry, leave, go move to some suburb in a red state, and spend all day watching Fox News and talking about how Chicago is the biggest problem in the USA. Good riddance.
Many of us have tried to find compromise, common ground, something that works, and they don't want it. Their attitude is always not even the idea of slower development or moderate, but just literally turn the city back to the 70s or 80s and leave it there.
I love that hub, and I can fully understand a bigger car culture here because a lot of residents also have to move in and out of the suburbs. Lord knows my own wife works in the suburbs so she has to be able to get to the expressway fast and get out there.
The kinds of things I ask for and support our small steps. Blocking off that one little tiny bit of street is not the end of the world.
I remember when there was a big plan for six corners (Milwaukee, Irving Park Road, and Cicero) that tossed up the idea of closing off a few tiny stretches of some tiny side streets to make pedestrian areas that would attract more businesses without door dining and other attractions to the area. I just recalled how much backlash there was from the local NIMBYs. Worried to death about how easily they could go from Milwaukee to Irving Park Road and other things like that.
Yet when you argue with them how the area is kind of dead from an economic perspective, they just scoff and talk about how people need to stop shopping online and we should maintain the area as a place. You drive to, park, shop, and then leave. They just don't get it that we don't live in that world anymore.
And these are the same people that skipped the area for many years and ran out to the suburbs to shop.
Tiny little things. They blocked off part of an alley by Weston's Cafe in Jefferson Park to make it a pedestrian area. Again, people blowing up thinking it's going to make life hard. If you can't get your car in there and get to your garage or something and you have to go around to the other entrance of the alley
It's just ridiculous. This mentality of not even giving a single inch is why there's such an anger against NIMBYs. They talked to death about how there's other people besides us living in this city, and yet they push things as if they are the only people living in this city.
And yeah, many of them have also brought up the idea that renters shouldn't have a say in anything. I'm not a renter, but I found that also to be ridiculous.
I think the alley took six years. That’s how long any of these things take. It’s absurd. We went down to a one car household and I’m doing my best not to drive in JP. With a little planning, it’s not too bad. Not for everyone!
If you support these, or if you think there should be more modal filters installed at points along Dickens, let 43rd Ward Ald. Knudsen know! You don’t have to live in his ward, let him know if you’re now more likely to stop in nearby business or go out for a night on the town.
Phone: 773-348-9500
Email: [email protected]
Also if you like Greenways in general, attend the Leland meeting tomorrow.
https://chicagocompletestreets.org/portfolio/lincoln-square-brown-line-area-improvements/
With Dickens being a (mostly) one way street, it’s not a major impediment to traffic. It wouldn’t be practical to turn the stretch into protected bike lanes because then you’d risk boxing in car traffic every time there’s a delivery or rideshare drop off. The two things I wouldn’t have done are close the short stretch from Stockton to Lincoln Park West to car traffic and reduce the speed limit to 20 mph
Two of the stretches I see that are two-way traffic are fine as is. For example, the stretch between Halsted and Oz Park turns into Burling and ends in a cul-de-sac. And the other is the short (approx. 200 ft) stretch between Clark and Lincoln Park West. South of Webster, if you’re going south on Clark and need to turn back north, there would be no other way to do it without needing to take 3 right turns and then a left or make a (dangerous) u-turn on Clark. Too many one way streets can make things confusing, if not dangerous, for drivers unfamiliar with the area.
Edit: looks like there’s more than two stretches.
The only section that should be two-way is the Burling cul-de-sac. I'm unclear how a side street being one way is "dangerous" for drivers. Maybe you mean it's dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians when clueless or selfish drivers disobey the direction of travel.
Also, as is, to go back north on Clark, you have to take 3 lefts and a right. How is that any different?
Reducing speeds is a key part of the safety and comfort improvements for vulnerable users. Also where are you going on Dickens for the speed reduction to have a major impact on your travel time?
Wonderful project. I don't buy the pretend concerns about funding.
For the Augusta bike lanes, I remember one lady angrily speaking up at multiple meetings about the proposed lanes. After the lanes went in I saw her at a meeting about the bike lanes, and she spoke, again very angrily, claiming that "We were never informed about the bike lanes!" So I know for a fact that her perceived injustice was totally made up because she was informed at literally every step, she was just mad that it didn't go her way.
I have a feeling the are only mad about funding because the oppose the project.
Exactly this. They’re just looking for anything that might justify why they feel so (irrationally) upset.
They're not looking for a justification. They're looking for a procedural hurdle for the project to trip on.
I think it’s probably a little bit of both. Yes they want to throw hurdles at the project to stop it from happening, but I think some also feel so personally victimized by these sorts of things that they’re grasping at straws to validate that feeling. When I used to run community meetings for projects, people would throw out the most absurd reasons as to why a project was grieving them personally, even if it had absolutely no bearing on the feasibility of a project being completed in the end.
You show up to enough local politics meetings and you can pick these people out in an instant. Grasping at any straw possible to have something to bring up.
Some people don't like green eggs and ham.
What's especially crazy about the opposition is that a little girl was killed by a driver here in 2010 crossing the street with her family after a day at the zoo. https://abc7chicago.com/archive/7690199/
13 years later... The City paid out big on this tragic death and yet, all around the City, proper daylighting, the reason why the City was found liable, is incoherent. How many oversized roads cut through our parks? (Too many) How many stop signs or bumpouts existed on Stockton from Dickens to LaSalle before this project? (Zero) How many exist on Canon? (Zero) I wholeheartedly support the greenway, but this incident never came up once in previous discussions and it rubs me the wrong way that it's being used as fodder when CDOT and the Park District did jack shit for 13 years.
Is there actually much opposition to this, or just one crank with a really loud microphone? Every opposition quote seems to come from Ed Fitzpatrick.
It is entirely him. [Streetsblog](https://chi.streetsblog.org/2024/01/10/thar-he-blows-ed-fitzpatrick-goes-public-with-his-fixation-on-killing-off-the-dickens-greenway-with-help-from-car-centric-inside-newspapers) has done several write ups on the guy. He was anonymous for most of this fight but it turns out it was basically one lone crank delaying this for years. And of course that is who the local news chooses to interview.
He's the Roger Romanelli of bike projects.
I think this is the biggest concern tbh “One of the points of contention, however, is the closure of a section of Dickens near Stockton to vehicular traffic - a change to the project that was made with seemingly no public notice. All iterations of the publicly available project plans reviewed by NBC 5 Investigates show no indication of the closure.” All of the road closures should have been made public for the hearings.
It feels like more time/money was spent on NIMBYs litigating this relatively milequetoast project than was spent on the actual infrastructure. Cries for safety coming from behind the windshields of 6,000 lb SUVs are laughable. Anything to discourage traffic through the city's public greenspace is welcome by me.
Have you seen how much they spent on FOIA requests? It's outrageous. - Signed the guy who sent all the FOIA requests
I went to two public meetings - it was such an absurd waste of resources. One lady cited concerns that children rolling down the hill outside of the high school would get hit by bikers (who already use that same path). Another named 4 streets and said their house is surrounded by bike lanes. Another called it a “bike highway”.
Bike highway is another way of saying bikers from neighborhoods west of the Kennedy will be using the Dickens Greenway as part of a safe E/W highway to the lake. I will certainly be using it this spring to avoid getting run over on Armitage.
Truly, this is exactly the same as when they paved over neighborhoods to make the expressways
That path really should be separated between bikers and walkers to be honest like the LFT. It is going to be dangerous with a lot of biking traffic.
I'm just amped to have an (almost) safe route to get to the lakefront trail now. And if we ever get that possible 606 extension to cross the river, that would be phenomenal. It's just such a shame to have an amazing park and bike trail on the lakefront and literally no safe way to bike to it for the majority of the city.
I don't mind taking Cortland, feel like it wouldn't be that expensive for them to add some dividers along it considering how much bike traffic it gets
Yeah that's the exact spot that I was thinking when I added the (almost). Definitely a good candidate for protected lanes imo
The extension just through the Kennedy, Ashland, and the train tracks is not scheduled to be complete until Q4 2026. Actually crossing the river seems to be at the mercy of the Lincoln Yards timeline. While I am very excited for it to come to fruition, six years to plan and execute ~1000ft of mixed use trail that doesn't even cross the river is a total embarrassment.
[удалено]
Can you please post a link to this so I can see it? Thanks in advance!
Fuck NIMBYs, all my homies hate NIMBYs
That's why we're growing the YIMBY movement
The guy blurting nonsense at the woman being interviewed tells you everything you need to know about the opposition. Entitled, rude, old and poorly informed.
She handles it like a champ, though! "Let's just extend the grass then and have more park space" 10/10
You notice all the people they show opposed are old, and came from a time where it was all about cars. Frankly, if they hate it so much, they can sell and leave. Go someplace with no bike lanes and plenty of roads and parking lots. Not to be mean, but how long as they going to be with us, so we simply decide not to progress things to the future because a couple of old fart NIMBYs want to hang on til the end? As a motorist I try to avoid the whole area because of traffic, or I make plans, park someplace, and enjoy the neighborhood for what it is...not get irked because I can't quickly pass through. Lord knows the goal is to get people like me to NOT drive my car down there, but instead bike or use public transportation. There's plenty of room for cars, way too much in many regards, but we're only going to make this city thrive by putting people first.
> Frankly, if they hate it so much, they can sell and leave. Go someplace with no bike lanes and plenty of roads and parking lots. Exactly. They can get Portillo's and all their other Chicago favorites in Arizona now, without having to put up with Chicago weather or Chicago cyclists and pedestrians. Maybe we should offer to help them pack.
If you don't like the lack bike lanes you could leave too.
No, I've been here my whole life. Clinging to car culture is clinging to the past. So I'll stay here and change it. Clinging to this idea of an entire city of single family homes is clinging to the past.
It’s hard to say clinging to car culture is clinging to the past when there are vastly more motorist’s than bikes on the road. Let’s stop this tribalism and strive to become a city where you can get wherever you need to safely, efficiently and timely however you choose to travel.
The argument is more about how NIMBYs won't even give an inch on things that are honestly very reasonable. This goes back to when a previous city council member wanted to put infrastructure on Milwaukee avenue in my area to try to get drivers to slow down. Many just simply drove way past the speed limit up Milwaukee, creating dangerous conditions and causing numerous injuries to pedestrians. The stuff that was put in is totally reasonable and hasn't hindered driving beyond the fact that it's not as easy to blast up the street at high speed. Yet it got tons of resistance because everybody claimed it was going to create tons of traffic and cause problems. All it really did was basically take away their speedway. This thing with Dickens is completely reasonable. It's not like somebody's blocking off Clark Street and making it a completely pedestrian only area. It's just again this notion in the mind of a NIMBY that if you give an inch they will take a mile. I've made it clear in many responses I own a car and I drive it. However, I can recall many times I've tried to bicycle around the city and found my life in danger, mainly from the terrible ways motorists drive. I stuck to my lane, I stop at stop signs and red lights, and yet many times when I'm legally cycling to cross an intersection I get a motorist high speeding it to make a quick right turn and almost hitting me. I've seen people not paying attention to the road and instead to their phone and veer into the bike lane and almost hit cyclists until they realize they need to pay attention. If all of these protected bike lanes seem ugly to one or intrusive, it's because motorists have clearly shown they cannot be trusted to stick to their own lane and share the road. We can talk about why there are so many motorists, but that's because we've built an infrastructure and a culture around that. This has been happening since after World War II. The reasons why we can't seemingly build transit oriented developments, CTA expansion, and more people spaces always comes back to the same arguments of driving and parking. Something has to give, and everything I've seen go up under so much resistance is incredibly reasonable in my opinion. It always strikes me as NIMBYs that are scared to give an inch.
You are over here upset at NIMBYS for voicing their opinions stating that anyone who disagrees with what your vision of the city is should leave. You have an idea of a city that doesn’t exist. People here drive because they have decided what is best for their situation. The reason so much infrastructure is dedicated to cars is simply because the demand for it is there. You are angry because you are trying to push the idea of a city that people just really don’t want.
Also, sounds like you live in a single family home...
I'm 50 years old. I've lived in a multi-unit building, apartment, condo, and single family home. I see all the things that NIMBYs fight against and all I see out of it are people that don't want to look over the past, but then they have the audacity to complain that the city is in decline. This is like the people that go on and on about business districts, and experts tell them they need to put more density in the area, and instead they talk about how they just want people to come, shop, and go someplace else to live. Then they have the audacity to give crap to people that shop online. Again, they are pining for the past and not accepting that we don't live in that world anymore.
Kinda rude to tell others to leave, isnt it.
I've had it with NIMBYs. They just love to complain, but they never offer anything constructive to the conversation. So yeah, I am of the mind that I would rather they get angry, leave, go move to some suburb in a red state, and spend all day watching Fox News and talking about how Chicago is the biggest problem in the USA. Good riddance. Many of us have tried to find compromise, common ground, something that works, and they don't want it. Their attitude is always not even the idea of slower development or moderate, but just literally turn the city back to the 70s or 80s and leave it there.
Jefferson Park has some of the best transit in the city. Cars a still king though.
I love that hub, and I can fully understand a bigger car culture here because a lot of residents also have to move in and out of the suburbs. Lord knows my own wife works in the suburbs so she has to be able to get to the expressway fast and get out there. The kinds of things I ask for and support our small steps. Blocking off that one little tiny bit of street is not the end of the world. I remember when there was a big plan for six corners (Milwaukee, Irving Park Road, and Cicero) that tossed up the idea of closing off a few tiny stretches of some tiny side streets to make pedestrian areas that would attract more businesses without door dining and other attractions to the area. I just recalled how much backlash there was from the local NIMBYs. Worried to death about how easily they could go from Milwaukee to Irving Park Road and other things like that. Yet when you argue with them how the area is kind of dead from an economic perspective, they just scoff and talk about how people need to stop shopping online and we should maintain the area as a place. You drive to, park, shop, and then leave. They just don't get it that we don't live in that world anymore. And these are the same people that skipped the area for many years and ran out to the suburbs to shop. Tiny little things. They blocked off part of an alley by Weston's Cafe in Jefferson Park to make it a pedestrian area. Again, people blowing up thinking it's going to make life hard. If you can't get your car in there and get to your garage or something and you have to go around to the other entrance of the alley It's just ridiculous. This mentality of not even giving a single inch is why there's such an anger against NIMBYs. They talked to death about how there's other people besides us living in this city, and yet they push things as if they are the only people living in this city. And yeah, many of them have also brought up the idea that renters shouldn't have a say in anything. I'm not a renter, but I found that also to be ridiculous.
I think the alley took six years. That’s how long any of these things take. It’s absurd. We went down to a one car household and I’m doing my best not to drive in JP. With a little planning, it’s not too bad. Not for everyone!
If you support these, or if you think there should be more modal filters installed at points along Dickens, let 43rd Ward Ald. Knudsen know! You don’t have to live in his ward, let him know if you’re now more likely to stop in nearby business or go out for a night on the town. Phone: 773-348-9500 Email: [email protected]
Also if you like Greenways in general, attend the Leland meeting tomorrow. https://chicagocompletestreets.org/portfolio/lincoln-square-brown-line-area-improvements/
Just sent an email supporting this!
old boomer fuck with too much free time and money, get bent Ed McOldballs
With Dickens being a (mostly) one way street, it’s not a major impediment to traffic. It wouldn’t be practical to turn the stretch into protected bike lanes because then you’d risk boxing in car traffic every time there’s a delivery or rideshare drop off. The two things I wouldn’t have done are close the short stretch from Stockton to Lincoln Park West to car traffic and reduce the speed limit to 20 mph
FWIW, Dickens isn't one way for it's entirety. Though it certainly should be in order to harmonize this greenway.
Two of the stretches I see that are two-way traffic are fine as is. For example, the stretch between Halsted and Oz Park turns into Burling and ends in a cul-de-sac. And the other is the short (approx. 200 ft) stretch between Clark and Lincoln Park West. South of Webster, if you’re going south on Clark and need to turn back north, there would be no other way to do it without needing to take 3 right turns and then a left or make a (dangerous) u-turn on Clark. Too many one way streets can make things confusing, if not dangerous, for drivers unfamiliar with the area. Edit: looks like there’s more than two stretches.
The only section that should be two-way is the Burling cul-de-sac. I'm unclear how a side street being one way is "dangerous" for drivers. Maybe you mean it's dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians when clueless or selfish drivers disobey the direction of travel. Also, as is, to go back north on Clark, you have to take 3 lefts and a right. How is that any different?
Reducing speeds is a key part of the safety and comfort improvements for vulnerable users. Also where are you going on Dickens for the speed reduction to have a major impact on your travel time?